I have always been a sports fan. I grew up playing sports, watching sports, and even spent some time coaching sports. From reading my bio it would be easy to assume I am a sports advocate who looks forward to each year's big events, such as Opening Day at Wrigley or the Superbowl. 

But those days mean nothing to me. The day I most look forward to is the Oscars. The lights, the music, the dresses, the stories, and the outpour of love and appreciation. To me, the Academy Awards is the most special day of the year. It's what I know. When a friend asks "who's that?" I always have the answer. When they ask, "what movie is she from?" I start listing them off. Movies are my specialty, which may explain where my passion to find and tell peoples stories stemmed from. 

Since my "bracket" consists of actors, directors, screen writers and costume designers, I consider myself a tough critic when it comes to evaluating news coverage of the Academy Awards. And I will be honest, if I was the academy and the BBC was Ben Affleck, the BBC would not be one of my nominees for best news coverage.  Although the Brits have provided a number of award-winning actors and actresses to American films, they are known to be perfectly content with their own film production companies, which is why I was shocked by the BBC's mass online coverage of the 2013 Oscars. 

The BBC was on top of its' game for the pre-coverage on the red carpet. As soon as my night started (5 p.m. CST), I logged on to the BBC's website to start my critique. When I got to the homescreen I saw a slideshow with the first story featuring a picture of Best Actress Nominee Jessica Chastain's face. As the night went on, more stories were added and by the time the award ceremony ended, each picture on the slideshow led the reader to a story in association with the Academy Awards. I was impressed by the BBC's emphasis on the importance of the award show seeing as there were no British films nominated for an award this year. 

In my last post I complained about the BBC's lack of feature stories, and nagged on about my want for feature stories to be easily accessible through the BBC's home page. The Web designers must have heard my request, because an entire sidebar was dedicated to features on the Oscars News tab. The addition of feature stories was a smart decision by the BBC because it familiarized its audience with the nominees. 

In addition to creating a large presence of followers through its use of feature stories and home page headers, the BBC did an excellent job of live tweeting from the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, CA. There have been claims that more than 1 billion people were watching the award ceremony tonight, but not everyone in England wanting to watch the Oscars could commit to watching it in the wee-hours of the morning. Providing live coverage from the event through twitter will provide a quick and easy update of the winners, scandals and falls that took place as many of their followers were sleeping. 

By the end of the show, every article and picture on the BBC website was centered on the Academy Awards. There were reviews of the winners, a picture slideshow, links to blogs and videos. In this particular situation, I don't have as much to complain about as I initially thought I would. The BBC delivered news-worthy content through the use of multi-digital platforms and created a tab specifically for that coverage. It was easily accessible, informational, entertaining, and enjoyable to be on the website during my five-hour long commitment to my couch. The BBC's coverage of the Academy Awards once again reassures me of its dedication to finding good stories and reporting them truthfully and objectively. For future coverage of the Academy Awards, I know I will be starting and ending my nights with the BBC. 

This week in #loweclass we focused on writing profiles by following the "show don't tell" model of writing to capture a subject's character. I especially enjoy writing and reading profiles because it allots time for me to get to know a person and find out what makes him or her unique. In my opinion the BBC delivers well-written, newsworthy profiles, but drives its viewers away from reading them because they are not easily accessible. It took a number of searches and mouse clicks to lead me to a page that listed profiles. 

The article I eventually came across, titled "Bus taunts that sparked Australian racism debate," did an excellent job of profiling Australian News Reporter Jeremy Fernandez. The profile began with an anecdotal lead that introduced me to both Fernandez and the subject at hand. The presence of an anecdotal lead reinforced what Professor Lowe had taught us in class on Monday, which is that an anedcdotal lead exposes the reader to the present, past and future of the character. It was good for me to see this in writing, and done well by author Nick Byrant. 

Speaking of Nick Bryant, this is the first time I have seen a byline on any article posted by the BBC. On a previous blog post I expressed my disappointment of the BBC's decision to not give a byline. It was nice to see a BBC journalist finally get credit for his work. This was smart on the BBC's part because Nick Bryant is a feature and profile writer. After reading this article the reader will know to search Bryant's name to find more profiles instead of wasting his or her time trying to navigate profiles from the home page. 

Another component of this profile that jumped out at me was Bryant's ability to make the profile newsworthy. Earlier this week when I was writing a profile on a guest speaker that came to class, I had a hard time intertwining his characteristics and the news of his arrival to campus. This article provided a great example of how a profile can reveal news just as effectively – if not more effectively – than a hard-news story. It tied Fernandez's story to a bigger picture issue that we aren't familiarized with regularly but should be so that issues like Australian racism are brought to light. 

For anyone struggling to write a profile, I would suggest reading Bryant's story to get a better understanding of "show don't tell" writing. While he was introducing Fernandez and telling his story, as the reader I felt like I was sitting on the bus with Fernandez watching his "Rosa Parks moment" take place. In my opinion, showing a reader what happened is much more powerful than telling a reader what happened, which is why I prefer to read profile stories. I think, depending on the story, it can cause the reader to form a connection to the character, and in the end may be more effective in persuading the readers to take action. 

Having enjoyed this profile so much, I hope to see more profiles show up on the home page of the BBC's website. Since the BBC covers such a large amount of global news I know it will continue to be hard for me to find profiles, but for me it would be worth it to keep digging. 

For those of you who didn't know this already, "Football" in England is soccer. Makes sense right? The players hit the ball with their actual feet. Why Americans thought to call a sport played primarily with hands "football" is beyond me. 

This whole football confusion has made many Brits quite critical of our most televised sporting event of the year. They just don't like it like they do their own football or rugby, and this was made clear to me through the BBC's lack of coverage of the 2013 Super Bowl. 

I was not surprised to find a picture of the Ravens running the ball on the BBC's home-screen slideshow, because they tend to be consistent with targeting their audience with worldwide news coverage. When I clicked the article though, I was disappointed by its central focus. It gave me a brief overview of the entire night – which included blurbs about Beyonce's performance and the power outage – but failed to go into detail about the happenings of the game. Seeing as I only watched the first half, I would have liked a little more detail to take me through the dramatical third quarter. There was no video coverage, no virtual scoreboard, and only two articles. One pre game article and one post. I wish the BBC would have provided more for their American audience, especially those living in the UK who could not watch the game live. 

I later found that their coverage was done right by most British people, or at least those willing to speak out. I got a good laugh from angry media consumers who argued the BBC shouldn't bother with covering American sports. I guess they must still be bitter about the whole football vs. soccer argument. But again, they do make a good point. What is the reasoning behind calling the winning team World Champions?